Once considered politically risky, repealing the death penalty now may come easily to politicians in Annapolis, who are likely to debate the issue in Session 2013.

Death row has only a handful of inmates, and prosecutors and juries have turned away from it, WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller reported.

While the death penalty in Maryland is on the books, in practice, the lethal injection chamber is in storage. Its use was shelved in 2006 by Maryland's highest court because of legal technicalities, and the governor's public safety officials have yet to issue required new regulations to put it back online.

The last time an inmate was executed in Maryland was in December 2005: Wesley Baker, who spent 13 years on death row for killing his grandmother during a robbery on the parking lot of a Baltimore County mall.

Five men now make up death row in Maryland. Most are there for crimes decades old. John Booth, 59, is on death row for a crime that dates to 1983.

"I doubt very seriously I'll ever be put to death," Booth said in an interview.

The General Assembly had already raised the bar on the death penalty, imposing new rules of evidence in 2009 that narrow the cases that are death-penalty eligible.

Since 2009, with hundreds of murders in Maryland each year, prosecutors have sought the death penalty just six times: two cases have yet to go to trial, two ended in pleas and, in two others, jurors opted for life sentences instead.